Although Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver left the Bitcoin community to help establish Bitcoin Cash, he still considers himself a Bitcoin maximalist. His preferred vision of Bitcoin has larger blocks and smaller fees, all to ensure that the cryptocurrency becomes one thing: electronic cash.
#BitcoinCash is still very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint.#Bitcoin BTC was overrun by a bunch of censorship supporting economically ignorant state worshipers. pic.twitter.com/nv8Yri3LV8
— Roger Ver (@rogerkver) June 18, 2019
Wallet Owned by Bitcoin Cash Maximalist Roger Ver Joins ‘Blockchain-Agnostic’ Crypto Project
The maximalist vision may, on the surface, appear to clash with the idea of the Foundation for Interwallet Operability (FIO) Protocol, which wants to help cryptocurrency wallets talk to each other, among other things. Notably, the protocol is “blockchain-agnostic” and seeks to benefit as many cryptocurrencies as possible.
Bitcoin.com joined the consortium this week, perhaps because even in a maximalist dreamworld where there is only one blockchain, very few people currently think any cryptocurrency is user-friendly enough.
Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash can both benefit from the promises of the FIO protocol – enabling payment requests to be generated and creating human-readable addresses being just a couple.
Stefan Rust, Bitcoin.com’s Global Head of Business Development, said:
“Crypto usability is still one of the biggest challenges the industry has to solve, and our new relationship with the FIO is all about trying to find a solution to this big issue.”
All Blockchains Have Usability Issues
Certain people have taken particular exception to Roger Ver’s ownership of Bitcoin.com.
Being a proponent of Bitcoin Cash, which is technically not Bitcoin, some view Ver’s current position as a threat.
People take a similar view of the @Bitcoin Twitter handle, which is controlled by someone who supports Bitcoin Cash.
FIO Protocol demands very little from blockchains directly. It creates a second layer that can be used for things like generating payment requests between wallets, advertising a vanity address like “yourname.fio,” and automatically handling actual blockchain addresses.
This creates a more useful merchant-user experience.
Today, you go into a store, and if you pay with crypto, you need to enter all the details manually in your wallet. Soon, FIO-enabled wallets will be able to receive a request from the merchant and sign off on the correct amount – much more like a debit card.
FIO’s founder David Gold believes that usability is the primary issue holding crypto back from mainstream mass adoption. You can have a great product, but if people aren’t sure how to use it, adoption’s inevitably going to be stunted.